Read tales of the latter kingdom 08 - moon dance for Free Online Page B

part of the next hour and a half was spent in the two of us getting ready for our day. By the time we had bathed and dressed and had our hair arranged by our maids, the sun was quite high, and we knew we must hurry, or be late for breakfast.
    As Janessa picked up one of her slippers to slide it on, however, she let out an exclamation of dismay. “Goodness! The soles of these are nearly worn through, and yet I have only had them these three months.”
    Recalling the way my aunt had chided Adalynn over the condition of her slippers, I couldn’t keep myself from taking a closer look. Sure enough, the leather soles of Janessa’s shoes were scuffed and scored, and wearing thin in several places. She certainly wasn’t active enough to have caused so much damage in such a short amount of time, and yet I could not deny that her slippers were in a pitiful state.
    “I will have to write to Papa and ask him to send me some more,” she said mournfully as she tied her shoe ribbons around her ankles. “And he will chide me for being so careless with these ones. But I know I must do something, for they will not last the month in this state.”
    Janessa did not mind being frank with me, for she knew that my own immediate family was far from rich, and so she did not bother to hide that her own father possessed nothing near the wealth that my uncle did. Indeed, I rather thought it reassured her to have someone close by who would not hold her own lack of means against her.
    Of course, I had a small secret of my own, one that I had not shared even with my aunt. My brother-in-law’s magical gift involved working with precious metals and stones, and indeed conjuring them from the very air. He knew better than to send me finished pieces, for I would not be able to wear them without having to reveal from whence they had come, but with some of my sister’s letters had also come small, undistinguished rocks — or at least, that was how they looked when they first arrived. I could not begin to guess at how Tobyn had managed the enchantment, but once I took those stones into my hand, they changed into a precious ruby, or a sapphire, or an emerald green as glass.
    He sent me those stones because he knew how much my father had depleted my already meager dowry. The gems were small and easy to hide, and something that would be gratefully accepted by any suitor who otherwise might be put off by my very small dowry. I supposed at some point I would have to reveal that I had more means than I had let on, but some part of me was stubborn and hoped that if a man cared for me enough to ask me to be his wife, then he would not think of how much money I had to contribute to the arrangement.
    But of course Janessa knew nothing of any of this, and so most likely thought her situation was equivalent to mine. I made sympathetic noises in response to her remark about her father being angry with her, and then said we had best be down for breakfast.
    My cousins appeared just as bleary-eyed as Janessa; Carella couldn’t seem to stop yawning. To look at them, one would have thought they’d been out all night, dancing with the local swains, and yet I knew they had all been safely in their beds.
    Or….
    Again that whisper of something forgotten tickled at my mind, although I couldn’t quite grasp what it was. I told myself not to worry, that if it was truly important, sooner or later I would be able to remember what I could not currently recall.
    “Goodness,” Aunt Lyselle said as she gazed from one of her daughters to the other. Her brow puckered in a frown; I could tell that she, too, was puzzled by their weary aspect. “What has gotten into all of you this morning?”
    “I don’t know, Mama,” Theranne replied. Her brown eyes looked enormous in her pale face. “I am just so very tired.”
    “You girls weren’t up all night telling ghost stories, were you?” my uncle asked. He wore an amused half-smile, and clearly wasn’t as concerned about their